The Luna Park Gazette

I was sitting in the theater yesterday when I had this stray thought about the outside world. While I was thoroughly immersed in The Ferryman , Jez Butterworth’s riveting drama about a rural Irish family that gets caught up in The Troubles of sectarian violence, I briefly wondered what was happening in the so-called real world. The play runs over three hours and I was unable to appease my I-phone addiction and, given the current political climate, I had this strange feeling that something major could be going on. Well, I found out a short time later over dinner that “something major” was yet another mass shooting in America, this time at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where an anti-Semitic psychopath shouting “All Jews must die!” allegedly shot 11 people to death and wounded six others before the cops shot him and took him into custody. I almost wish I hadn’t looked at my phone. I keep saying that it’s pointless to write about these slaughters, that nothing will cha...

It seems like it just a minute ago we were all so young. I met up with some friends from high school earlier this month and I can’t stop doing the math. Was it really that many years ago that we all first met? Are we really that old? And, for the love of God, can we get a recount? The mini-reunion got me thinking about other people I knew back when I was a teenager and I decided to waste some of the time I have left by poking around on Facebook. I noticed that one of my friends had friended a guy I knew in high school who was nicknamed “Pooch.” We weren’t close, but we were friendly enough, at least for a while. At some point, though, things soured somewhat between us and I’m not sure why. I am certainly partially to blame for the rift because back then I was quick to take offense and all too eager to hold to it. This is still a problem, by the way, but at least now I acknowledge it and I’m trying to improve. I never saw Pooch after high school and I didn’t think about...

If I knew I was going on an adventure I would’ve worn a pith helmet. I met up with a friend on Saturday to check out an old building and wound up doing some serious time traveling. We were enjoying the annual Open House New York event, where hundreds of the city’s normally off-limits sites and attractions are open to the public. My aunt suggested checking out the old Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn on DeKalb Avenue, a building I had spotted a few weeks ago while running an errand downtown. At the time I snapped a photo of the outside and wondered what the interior looked like. Here was my chance to find out. So, I contacted my buddy Maria for a little urban exploring. Now I have to confess that I was a little concerned that I was inviting my friend to view a musty old mausoleum. What a great way to spend a Saturday, right? However, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The second we walked into the place I knew we had discovered a real gem. Designed by Mowbray & Uffinger a...

Is there an oddsmaker in the house? I had a chance encounter recently at the Whitney Museum of American Art that I’m still having trouble believing actually happened. If I had to pick a theme song for this particular Friday night in the Meatpacking District it would unquestionably be OMC’s 1995 hit “ How Bizarre ” because that’s the only word that fits the situation. I had gone to the Whitney’s new digs on Gansevoort Street in my half-hearted effort to get the hell away from the DVR and walk amongst human beings. It was pay-what-you-wish night, which caused a massive but relatively-fast moving line to form outside the museum’s front door. Once I was inside I went to the top floor and worked my way down. The new Whitney building is a work of art on its own with observation decks on several floors that offer fabulous views of the city. I thought some of the exhibits were a little strange, but I was trying to keep an open mind. Plus, the Whitney has a number of Edward Hopper p...

We lost such a beautiful voice last week. I’ve been taking this fabulous class “Five for Five” for the last three years and not only have I learned so much about the craft of writing, but I've also had the privilege of meeting some fabulous people. One of those people was Kathleen, a lovely woman and an amazing writer, who died last week from cancer. I’m still having trouble accepting this terrible news. The class is going to start up again in a few weeks and it’s hard to believe that we won’t see Kathleen again, that she won’t be sitting on the couch in our teacher, Rosemary’s, living room, sharing her writing, her thoughts, and her heart. Every week I looked forward to hearing her work, much of which was autobiographical. Kathleen was an Irish Catholic like yours truly so I appreciated her stories about our tribe. She was also so insightful and supportive when commenting on our work. One night I was suffering from a hideous cold and I somehow managed to drag myself to ...

I picked up my home phone’s receiver on Thursday and listened to something I hadn’t heard in months. A dial tone. Ever since my accident in December, I’ve been pretty much living off my cellphone. I preferred the mobile unit to the hospital’s phone and it was more convenient to use the cell when I got home and had to lumber around the house in leg braces for weeks. However, my old landline phone was getting ready to call it a day and I asked my sister to get me a new landline phone for Christmas. The new one is a beauty and comes with a spare receiver that I set up near the TV so I wouldn’t have to dash into my computer room every time someone called me. There was only one problem: I couldn’t get it to work. I read the directions over and over, but I couldn’t make sense out of them. I pressed the various buttons, plugged in all wires and the thing was still as dead as Kelsey’s nuts, as my father used to say. I should mention here that I have no idea who Kelsey was or wha...

I've been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan, but not this past weekend. In fact, I had a series of fabulous encounters that had me absolutely reeling with joy. It started on Friday when I was bouncing out of the Barnes & Noble at Union Square and spotted a gaggle of smartphones raised high in the air. The store routinely hosts authors of every sort and I reckoned these people were jockeying to get a photo of some cable news blowhard or the latest celebrity chef, whose overpriced cook book would probably end up in the dollar bin by Thanksgiving. Oh, get a load of these star-struck twits , I mentally sneered. They’re so pathetic . I was due to meet a friend for lunch on 28th Street and the only reason I was in the store in the first place was to use the facilities, as the old kidneys ain’t what they used to be. But I figured, what the hell? Let me at least find out which D-lister I’m snubbing. “Say,” I asked a nearby employee. “What’s all the excitement about...